Over the past decade, Taiwan’s TSMC has significantly outpaced competitors such as Intel and Samsung in the race to make the smallest and fastest semiconductors. Largely due to the ingenuity of its engineers, TSMC has become one of the most important geopolitical companies in the world. However, at the same time, many in Taiwan fear that there will soon be a shortage of qualified engineers. A declining population, a demanding work culture, and an abundance of competitive tech jobs exacerbate an already obvious problem.

The stakes are huge. Manufacturers claim that TSMC’s dominance in microchips provides Taiwan with a guarantee against Chinese encroachment. They base their arguments on the fact that the United States will have to protect a very important part of its supply chain. Over the past decade, the company’s workforce has grown by almost 70 percent, and Taiwan’s birth rate has halved. At the same time, startups in areas such as artificial intelligence are attracting the best engineers. TSMC has to compete with giants like Google and overseas semiconductor companies like ASML in the Netherlands, which offer better working conditions. TSMC executives defended the company’s tough work culture, which they say has turned it into a $440 billion giant with 73,000 employees. But in recent years, TSMC chairman Mark Liu has repeatedly acknowledged that the biggest problem facing the Taiwanese semiconductor industry is a lack of talent.

Taiwan’s largest job search platform, 104 Job Bank, posted over 33,000 job listings in the semiconductor industry in August. About 326,000 people were employed in the sector last year, according to the state Industrial Technology Research Institute. TSMC has been forced to adjust its HR strategy. He expanded the recruitment criteria and increased the base salary for graduate students, who can now expect an average annual compensation of up to $65,000. At the same time, graduate students are hired before the completion of the course of study, and even high school students for internships.

The challenges facing Taiwan’s chip industry come amid the global semiconductor crisis. In China, where officials have sought to recruit Taiwanese engineers to develop a nascent chip industry, the state-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences is also concerned about a “severe shortage” of skilled workers. According to some estimates, the Chinese microchip industry is facing a shortage of 200,000 people.

In the meantime, the EU is activating a pilot system to monitor the semiconductor supply chain to identify any shortcomings in the overall microchip production chain. Having seen key European industries such as the automotive industry collapse during the pandemic due to a shortage of precious microchips, Europe is trying to prevent future semiconductor crises.